Just when you think there can’t possibly be a more jaw-dropping bureaucratic screw-up than the Los Angeles Unified School District’s year-long inability to pay its teachers their correct salaries …the State of California treats us to this.
Here’s the deal, the The Service Employees International Union—SEIU—specifically, SEIU’s Local 1000 filed a lawsuit on Wednesday suing Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for…..are you ready for this? failing to figure out the correct release dates for around 33,000 inmates serving time in California prisons.
Yes, you read right. The CDCR has has around 33,000 people that they’re letting out….whenever.
These are people whose sentences were affected by two court rulings that mandated “good-time” credits for certain inmates. In the case of non-violent offenders this might mean as much as 50 percent off their sentences, or with violent offenders, as little as 15 percent.
When I got SEIU spokesman, Danny Beagle, on the phone, I asked for a random example of what we’re talking about. “Okay,” he said, “I have a case right here. This guy was supposed to have been released in….let’s see…. February of 2007. But instead he was released on, I think it says, early October of 2007. Yeah, October.” In other words, EIGHT MONTHS LATER than the guy—whoever he is—was mandated by the courts to be let out of lock-up.
That is, to put it in the mildest terms, unlawful
The reasons SEIU is bringing the suit has to do with the fact that it represents the correctional case records analysts who are supposed to figure this stuff out, but who say they are so understaffed and overloaded that they simply can’t do their jobs—and they don’t want to get sued because of it.
Plus the SEIU feels it would be a good thing if the state abided by the U.S. Constitution.
“The whole process of setting release dates is melting down,” said Marc Bautista, the Local 1000 VP who actually filed the suit in Sacramento Superior Court. Bautista estimates another 99 analysts are needed to remedy the shortfall. “We have repeatedly warned CDCR of this problem and they have refused to act.”
Oh, and did I mention the cost of these 33,000 little mistakes? Well, allow me to do a little math for you. The State Legislative Analyst estimates that each prisoner costs around $43,287 a year to incarcerate, or a little less than $120 a day. Now, when we think about Prisoner X, above, the guy who spent eight extra months in the pinta, that’s $120 times 30 days times 8 months—-or $28,800. Not chump change, but not going to break the state. (Although Prisoner X’s righteous civil lawsuit seeking damages for his eight wrongful months behind bars might be a tad more costly, but we won’t go there.)
Now, if we have 33,000 prisoner X’s serving that much extra prison time, it adds up to…..just under a billion dollars. ($950,400,000 to be exact.) But I’m sure the state couldn’t be SO stupid as to keep 33,000 people locked up for 8 months over their time.
We really, really hope not. But the truth is, it could be worse. For instance, with a non-violent drug case, four years might be dropped to two. Surely we aren’t keeping some people two extra years…..are we?
“We really don’t know,” said the SEIU’s Danny Beagle.
It turns out that, among the inmates they do know about, according to Thursday’s Sacramento Bee, one had his release date miscalculated by 643 days (nearly two years). Another stayed 366 days longer than his mandated sentence.
This is not reassuring.
Now remember, this is all happening in a state where the prisons are so overcrowded that last year the governor declared a state of emergency. To remedy the problem, the state legislature passed AB900, which will add 53,000 new inmate beds at an estimated cost to the California taxpayers of…$7.8 BILLion.
Note to Governor Arnold and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez: Guys, before you go on your nice little $7.7 billion building spree to get us those new beds, do you think it might be a good idea to, like, first get rid of some of the 33,000 bed-using people who may or may not be legally mandated to be there?
Just curious.
By the way, bigtime kudos to SEIU Local 1000 for slapping these fools in Sacramento upside the head with this lawsuit.
I gotta go. This whole thing’s giving me a headache.
(Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / AP)
1 – No one told them to commit a felony in the first place.
2 – I’m filled with over joy with them being in a 6×9 cell instead of having them at my local 7-11 store with a handgun wearing a mask.
3 – I will pay a little extra toward California State Taxes to have them incarcerated – whatever the orginal sentence imposed.
These people may be mandated to be out of lock-up but it doesn’t say they are off parole. So, in short, CDC continues to have the discrection on having them detained until they come around and validate their release.
This sounds more like a bunch of super liberals crying justice – foul play, and wanting instant results overnight.
If this new ruling is taking affect, I will push and lobby for the superior courts to break the practice of mid-term sentencing. They should not cut deals and slap them with the high sentencing bracket.
Sure you will pay more taxes! NOT! Sorry but as I said yesterday the “law n’ Order” types will come out of the woodwork here.
Hey why not send them to Gitmo. Out of sight and all that!
And what happens when they do get out and most do return. Guess we’lol have shown them how impoortant the “Rule of Law” is!
Why bother. Salute the flag!
It’s not the prisons. It’s government.
Huh?
What rlc said at 4:16 pm.
Poplock, who’s told this blog about his own experiences with gangs and life as it is on the streets — I’ve looked into at some of this blog’s gang coverage — dares to offer his opinion, and then the ubiquitous “ric” pops up to promptly shoot him down, with smug self-reference to his own comments, no, I mean predictions, about what he himself said yesterday:
“Sorry but as I said yesterday, the ‘Law ‘N Order’ types will come out of the woodwork here.
“Hey, why not just send them to Gitmo. Out of sight and all that…(drivel from ric)”
“Why bother” to speak is right, since ric knows everything and predicted that the “Law ‘N Order types” (apparently the bain of our society, not the criminals themselves) will contradict his supreme wisdom, and so he disdainfully has to come forth yet again to put them in their place.
This ric, who’s allegedly a former prof. at USC? LOL. Those poor students, learning “the art of argumentation” from such lofty, open-minded and nuanced brains.
Then there’s the incomprehensibly illiterate smug sidekick, “unburdened by a formal education” and it surely shows, reg. Showing his kneejerk lockstep role as Comrade in Arms, piping in just to say, “what ric said.” Since ric does snide, unsubstantive attacks on anyone who differs with them someone more eloquently, that is, he’s just plain snide, dismissive and unsubstantive, not totally incomprehensibly illiterate.
These two have continued to kill off any genuine dialogue or contributions from anyone who might actually have something intelligent to contribute on this blog, forever now.
Long live free speech, Comrades ric and reg style!
I kinda looked up Richard – I think he’s from San Francisco, Ca. So I dont blame the guy for jumping on my views.
How nice to know that someone out there thinks my opinions are worthless. All due to my life experiences of growing up and seeing the worst U.S. society has to offer inner city kids – death and violence.
Everytime I sign that paperwork to send or return a harden criminal back to jail – kinda pride sets in.
Born and raised in Norwalk – a few miles from Dick Nixon’s hometown of Whittier. Pat went to my High School. Sorry to disappoint you.
By the way you can post all you want and no one censors you here. But that doesn’t mean I won’t comment. Neither will I run to mommy if you ding me back. I think its called “the clash of ideas” or the “Marketplace” – dang I alwaays did get Mill and Micklejohn mixed up!
God…the brain police have showed up. Don’t disagree with Maggie or you’re trying to crush the First Amendment. And Poplock sure is a defensive little whiner making ridiculous leaps of logic (“he’s from San Francisco”) for someone who postures as a hardass.
Celeste, you’ve let the dregs take over and attack everyone, in gratuitously smug, nasty and totally unconstructive ways, then the same dregs come back and attack those who challenge them with more derogatory and gratuitously infantile idiocies:
“runs to Mommy,” “brain police have showed up” (you don’t have a brain, reg, that’s why you resort to snide snottiness and irrelevant, stupidly illiterate rants), “Poplock sure is a defensive little whiner making ridiculous leaps of logic” (you wouldn’t recognize logic if it bit you in the butt), “for someone who postures as a hardass.” (Previous threads more of the same every time anyone offers an opinion: if that’s not defacto censorship to you, it’s only because you grew up and live in a social and mental cesspool and have found each other on this blog. Clearly, even a “hardass” who’s had his share of life in the hood has more decency and grew up with more civility that you two hatefully smarmy genuine “brain police” fancying yourselves intellectuals.)
These are not “comments” but Stalinist-style attacks meant to intimidate and defacto censor. ric, making a “comment” is usually not just some gratuitously snide and smug attack on the person dismissing both the comments and the audacity of the individual for making it. reg, you’re apparently fancying yourself some sort of “hardass” is a pathetic attempt by some little weasel to anonymously attack people.
The fact that ric allegedly taught journalism (?) at USC and has been defended by Celeste as a great addition to that school, is a reflection of the closed-mindedness that pervades that world and the inherent inability of such people to teach anything resembling objective journalism.
Ed Guffman and Norman Corwin are two old-style (literally as well as metaphorically, they’re 90-ish now) shining lights of the journalistic world who have taught at USC; how sad to see how low the standards have become (at least in some cases. Someone clearly had the sense to dismiss ric.)
Yeah, it’s too bad that these threads get polluted by brain-dead, hysterical, obsessive ad hominem rants.
“Lucinda” wrote:
Then she made the following comments:
I think it’s time to call the selef-awareness police.
Make that self-awareness police.
Yes, Randy, you (all three of you Comrades) need to “call the self-awareness police.” I’m only pointing out the manner in which the lowlifes have taken over this blog and driven off everyone else with their crude, personal Stalinist “brain police” tactics. But of course since none of you old lefties have any self- awareness, logic or manners, you keep attacking, attacking, anyone who holds a mirror to your pompously rude and completely idiotic behavior and rants.
Celeste can post till the cows come home, but with this group of “regular commenters” filled with self-delusion and lack of self-awareness, the comments are nothing but a clear demonstration of how low the left can sink in viciousness. You’ve all demonstrated by your actions, what no amount of argument from Woody or anyone could have: you shame yourselves.
Richard,
Whatever comes out of your mouth is all dog excrement. That’s why I dont resort on sitting here and wasting my time responding to an half-ass smoker like you.
Nixon’s hometown was not Whittier. Yorba Linda was his hometown – dont insult a dead president, even if he was a criminal and a piece of crap (Bush is right behind him).
Nixon went to school and graduated from Whittier College….your a moron.
By the way, I’m pretty sure your from San Francisco. Your not from Norwalk.
Anyone that lives in Norwalk will agree with me – the city is plagued with an uncontrollable crime rate – specifically 211 robberies. The people of Norwalk are tried of these predators using the 5 fwy & 605 fwy as a chicken shit escape route.
(NOTE: This comment is not directed to a specific person but to everyone commenting in this stream. So please read it that way. Nor is it meant as criticism)
My new take on all this is that anyone who doesn’t want to comment back to someone who criticizes him or her….simply won’t. So if you do respond to someone who’s attacked you this suggests that at some level you enjoy the theatrical give-and-take of the quarreling. (And why shouldn’t you?) If not, I figure you won’t react but will just ignore whomever is snipping at you.
Happy Sunday.
It’s nice to see that Maggie has found a fellow-commenter who has reached her level of erudition and insight.
Of course, if I had my way the thread would be all about dog excrement and who grew up and/or lives in a cesspool. Of course, I’m an incomprehensibly illiterate Stalinist who once lived in San Francisco, so what would one expect ?
Celeste, wouldn’t the world be better if people were more like us?
Time to call the self-awareness army
You shouldn’t talk that way about Celeste.
Two points.
Did I say that I taught Journalism? Please reread what I said. I was an instructor in the Speech Communication Department and I taught Rhetoric and Public address. A very different matter.
I’m glad that P has been able to correct my geographical confusion. And all the time I lived on Studebaker Rd I must have really been at 18th and Castro! Thanks for putting me straight.
(Oh and I’ll see you at the A&W at Alondra accross from Cerritos – where I also taught – for a frosty one! Too bad the “Red Bell” closed or we could do lunch!)
No, Celeste, I for one don’t enjoy the “theatrical” nature of these exchanges, but being attacked and seeing the same group do it to others (that is, to everyone but those who agree with their way-left rants) is something no one should have to bear. It’s always that same group who attacks, the others respond, and that needed to be pointed out. Everyone is not on an equal playing field here — it’s like asking the kids being bullied on the schoolyard to ignore the bullies. (Yes, that’s the level the discourse sinks to, but any school would haul those bullies with their foul mouths and gratuitous personal attacks into the principal’s office or expel them, not tell their victims to “just take it” as ric and reg opine we should all do. NO ONE should have to endure that for posting an opinion, and the true nature of the “anti-establshment” left has revealed itself. How sad.)
It surely isn’t “Speech Communication” (whatever that awkward mouthful is) or a model for “Rhetoric and Public Address.” Anyone who taught at any level should know better.
So, since I’m not going to endure vile attacks every time I offer an opinion, like the others who’ve tried, I just won’t post — your threads can continue to be “owned” by these bullies. Reg’s “reply” in #17 shows which way the blog will continue to go. Too bad, because you deserve better.
(sigh.)
Alright children…..settle down. I’m going to have a series of posts coming up that I hope you’ll enjoy reading and opining about. They’ll be a series of Year End Lists. Some will be political in nature, some won’t be in the least political. (Some will be entirely frivolous). First one late today.
It is my hope that y’all can enjoy and respond to them without having to shriek at each other. Please try to surprise me….in a good way.
BTW, I refuse to take sides in this fruit throwing binge.
As I’ve said before, I genuinely enjoy all of you, although I really wish there was less in the way of name calling. It gets a tad tiresome for those readers out there who are non-commenters.
Happy Sunday.
RE: “Reg’s ‘reply’ in #17 shows which way the blog will continue to go. Too bad, because you deserve better.”
Obviously we are in dire need of the irony squad as well the self-awareness army.
rlc: “And all the time I lived on Studebaker Rd I must have really been at 18th and Castro! Thanks for putting me straight.”
No pun intended?
Bada Bing!
Woody,
Rest assured I was not talking about Celeste.
Teaching upper division classes at a local community college. yeah right dude.
I’m sorry P but you seem to have a reading comprehension problem. Please point to anything I wrote that says I taught upper division course exclusively or at any time. Haad some trouble with that part of your SATS I guess?